Robert Bresson

  • Robert Bresson – Au hasard Balthazar aka Balthazar [Criterion] (1966)

    Drama1961-1970EpicFranceRobert Bresson

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Jim Ridley wrote:
    With exquisite, heartrending calm, Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar lays out the life of a donkey, from first brays to final rest. Baptized Balthazar, the donkey goes through passages of life parallel to his early owner, a farmer’s daughter named Marie (played as an adult by Anne Wiazemsky).
    Together and separately, they experience the full spectrum of man’s failings: Balthazar is kicked by passing thugs, beaten by an owner, and eventually used for theft, while Marie is seduced, abandoned and ultimately assaulted. Yet while Bresson’s vision is harsh, it’s also redemptive, even merciful. It ends on a note of quiet transcendence, as if to say all suffering, no matter how grave, cannot last.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Au hasard Balthazar (1966)

    1961-1970ClassicsDramaFranceRobert Bresson

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Jim Ridley wrote:
    With exquisite, heartrending calm, Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar lays out the life of a donkey, from first brays to final rest. Baptized Balthazar, the donkey goes through passages of life parallel to his early owner, a farmer’s daughter named Marie (played as an adult by Anne Wiazemsky).
    Together and separately, they experience the full spectrum of man’s failings: Balthazar is kicked by passing thugs, beaten by an owner, and eventually used for theft, while Marie is seduced, abandoned and ultimately assaulted. Yet while Bresson’s vision is harsh, it’s also redemptive, even merciful. It ends on a note of quiet transcendence, as if to say all suffering, no matter how grave, cannot last.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Le Diable Probablement AKA The Devil, Probably (1977)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaItalyRobert Bresson

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Having largely focused on literary adaptations from 1951’s Diary of a Country Priest through 1974’s Lancelot du Lac, Robert Bresson turned his attention to the politics of the present with this seminal, searing send-up of post-’68 France. Our protagonist is Charles, a young man adrift who tries out a variety of activities to lend meaning to his life: drugs, psychoanalysis, ecology, radical politics… With surgical precision (and, contrary to his reputation, a sense of humor), Bresson vividly chronicles how Charles and his similarly listless fellow travelers come to know firsthand the emptiness of modern existence, and the question becomes not so much how to cope but rather how to escape. Perhaps Bresson’s most explicitly political film, and among the most chilling cinematic portraits of a historical moment.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Les anges du péché AKA Angels of Sin (1943)

    1941-1950ClassicsDramaFranceRobert Bresson

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis wrote:
    A well-off young woman decides to become a nun, joining a convent that rehabilitates female prisoners. Through their program, she meets a woman named Thérèse who refuses any help because she says she was innocent of the crime she was convicted for. After being released from prison, Thérèse murders the actual perpetrator of the crime and comes to seek sanctuary in the convent.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Quatre nuits d’un rêveur AKA Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971)

    1971-1980DramaFranceRobert Bresson

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Tells of the love of a young ‘dreamer’ for the woman he meets on the Pont Neuf in Paris one summer night, her obsession with an absent lover and the four nights they spend together.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Le Diable probablement AKA The Devil Probably (1977)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaFranceRobert Bresson

    Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The story unfolds of a young man living in Paris. He wants more from life than the glib, superficial truths and material things that are on offer to him. He reaches out to his family and friends and psychiatrist to provide him with the great answers in life. But his spiritual deliverance remains beyond his grasp until he reaches a bizarre arrangement with a fellow hippie.

    Robert Bresson is one of France’s most distinguished and influential film makers. His works include ‘Lancelot Du Lac’ and ‘L’Argent’ and he has won major prizes and unrestrained critical acclaim. Many distinguished critics regard THE DEVIL PROBABLY as a masterpiece, and one of Bresson’s greatest films. Artificial EyeRead More »

  • Robert Bresson – Une femme douce (1969)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaItalyRobert Bresson

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Bresson’s brilliant adaptation of Dostoevsky’s short story (A Gentle Creature) exhibits in its lapidary sequences the political and existential revolt of a young student in Paris. Sharing a theme that can be traced from Bresson’s Mouchette to his fantastic exploration of revolutionary choices in The Devil Probably, Une Femme Douce articulates in its inimitable minimalist mode a range of issues from the ideological options of France post-May ’68 to human relationships. Dominique Sanda is not the conventional, recognizable student revolutionary, but a “gentle” philosopher whose powers of sensitivity and social scrutiny exceed and tease the prosaic, crude disposition of her bourgeois husband. The sequences in the zoo, the museum of natural history and the performance of Hamlet are powerful. On another note, look out for Indian experimental filmmaker Kumar Shahani who was assisting Bresson at this time, sitting diagonally behind Sanda in the sequence at the movie theater.
    Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut AKA A Man Escaped (1956)

    1951-1960ArthouseDramaFranceRobert Bresson

    Quote:
    A Man Escaped opens with the indelible image of a pair of restless hands belonging to a French resistance officer named Lieutenant Fontaine (Francois Leterrier). His face is inscrutable and impassive, concealing his calculated attempt to flee from the escorted prison transport vehicle. He reaches for the door handle, retreats, then reaches again. At a momentary distraction of a crossing railcar, he seizes the opportunity, but is immediately recaptured, and is severely beaten by the German guards for the attempt. Imprisoned and condemned to die, Fontaine finds the courage and determination to escape his certain fate. Based on a true account by Andre Devigny, A Man Escaped is a visually minimalist, emotionally austere film about friendship, hope and perseverance. Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Les Affaires publiques (1934)

    1931-1940ArthouseFranceRobert BressonShort Film

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    Quote:
    Bresson’s first film is, totally uncharacteristically, a slapstick comedy, centred around two neighbouring republics, Crogandia and Miremia, and the various disasters that befall the ceremonial unveiling of a statue, the launching of a ship, and the crash-landing of a Miremian pilot in Crogandian territory.Read More »

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